This 2026 Mets season so far is like when I ran the 1981 New York City marathon. Imagine if I took a few steps, tripped on my shoelaces, skinned my knee, try to get up and run only to fall again and have my shoe fall off and twisted my ankle. (I didn’t, though….I ran a 3:25 marathon that day).
That image pretty much summarizes the Mets season so far.
Last night was competitive against the struggling Angelinos but was lost in extras, 4-3, with Waddell pitching decently but not catching breaks.
Bo Bichette and Juan Soto get the goat’s horns. After the Mets rallied to tie in the late innings, with the bags juiced and 1 out, Bichette was retired on a force out at home, and then Soto fouled back a dead-center-of-the-plate fastball on 0-1, and looked really mad at himself. Then, he fanned on a cutter out of the zone on a checked swing. The Mets needed a grand slam there.
The Mighty Soto has 8 RBIs on the season. Meanwhile, Munetaka Murakami of the CWS has 13 - HRs - that is, and 26 RBIs. Hmmm…
Anyway…my topic is the Mets Minors…
As I recapped this past week, the Mets minors, in both hitting and pitching, has performed nowhere near what you expect of a top 10 minor league organization. It looks more like a 25th best, based on results so far. The hitting has been mostly quite bad, and the pitching has been mostly pretty bad. And that’s not even pretty good.
In fact, in a league where the second-worst team is hitting .224, the Brooklyn Colonics are hitting an incomprehensible .181. Binghamton’s dead last by far Eastern League team average meanwhile is looked upon with envy by Brooklyn hitters, but by no one else.
Meanwhile, the Queens Mutts are 27th in batting average and 29th in runs, a mere 81 runs behind the Braves.
Back to topic…
The formula for the major leagues, though, as it involves the farm system, is to be able to bring up a bunch of pitchers annually that are viable, and a handful of hitters that can get the job done.
Starting with the hitters first, I think there’s extremely little doubt that AJ Ewing is not going to be a major plus. Potential All Star. Not only has AJ had an extraordinary minor-league season so far, let’s remember that in spring training, this happened:
“A.J. Ewing had an impressive 2026 spring training with the New York Mets, batting .381 (8-for-21) with one home run and six RBI in 10 Grapefruit League games.”
Pinch yourself - AJ looks REAL. The dude has hit AAA like a mugger sneaking up behind an unwitting victim. JUST….SO….HOT!
On base, I believe, in 14 of his first 22 AAA PAs.
Carson Benge? He has most likely gone through the deep dark days of his early rookie season, and it’ll probably be decidedly uphill from here.
And Nick the Very Quick Morabito has hit quite well in AAA. The Nick average is not sky high, but his on base percentage (.384) is very strong and he’s added long ball power.
All three of them are fast, so having all three of them up here soon will be a real treat. If somehow, all three of them really click, with their speed, it could be shades of the 1985 Cardinals, stealing bases with great abandon.
That would be extremely helpful, since last year‘s two main base dealers, Soto and Lindor, who combined to steal a valuable 69 of 79 last year, will probably be stealing very few bases this year after their calf injuries, which will need to be carefully managed.
Another speedster, Luis Robert Junior, is injured so often that I don’t know how much he’ll run either. Some guys, like Robert and like Giancarlo Stanton, are just plain fragile
Beyond those three hitting prospects, I don’t see much else coming out of the hitting prospects in the minors this year, if anything.
But Jacob Reimer was totally comatose until the last game of April and, thru early on Saturday, he was 5 for his last 9 ABs, quite encouraging.
Further down, speedy Mitch Voit is showing signs of hitting life, and down in St. Lucie, Elian Peña, and Dandy Randy Guzman are both off to terrific starts, and may really be on the radar screen big time starting next year. All three, however, are unlikely to impact the Queens team until 2028.
Pitching wise, I am not at all worried about Tong, Santucci, and Thornton, because all three are probably working on refining things to broaden the repertoires, so their current results may not be optimal in the statistical sense, but will pay dividends later on. Tong, in fairness, has 3 outings this year spanning 15 innings where he has allowed just one hit in each of the 3. He’s a lot better than the lousy weather has been.
Wildly Rapid Ryan Lambert (I Am The Egg Man) should almost be ready right now to handle bullpen work in Queens, and hopefully Dylan Ross will be soon, as well. Both simply need to throw it more through that little rectangular box you see over home plate on your TV screen. When that happens, the pitches are called “strikes”. When it doesn’t, they’re called “balls”.
Nate Lavender? He might be having Deep Purple music walk-ins from the Mets pen soon in 2026. He’s close.
But I don’t think that the minors pitching depth is what it was this time in 2025.
Trading away Brandon Sproat for Freddie (Krueger) Peralta may not in hindsight have been the smartest move, but only time will really tell. I don’t think anyone expected the club’s horrendous season start. If the season was going well, so far, people would probably be happy that the Mets acquired Peralta. And, the last time I looked, “Suffera-Jett” Williams was not setting AAA on fire this year for his new team. (Advice to David: do not trade anymore Brandon’s. Or Tidwell’s.)
Tidwell and his Switch Blade got dispatched to Fort San Francisco for a bucket of gruel.
So, to conclude, the green shoots are pretty sparse in the lunar landscape that is the Mets season so far. But, for the noted prospects, the bright side is that they will probably be showing up sooner than they would’ve otherwise, had the Mets been doing well.
Well, we can hope (absent a sudden Queens team turnaround, which I think is unlikely with Lindor out) that this is the Met’s latest version of the dismal 1983 season. After 2026, hopefully they are setting themselves up for a repeat of Mets 1984 and Mets 1985 and Mets 1986, all over again.
Ryan Clifford has fanned 48 times in 30 games against AAA pitching. Still a prospect…or is he one of the Top 30 Mets Suspects?
ReplyDeleteI think by comparison of Shawn Abner, who was the Mets overall #1 pick in 1984 and was a MLB bust. In the year SDP called him up, he had hit .300 in 105 AAA games, while fanning just 68 times. But still was a bust.
At Clifford’s current K pace, by his 105th game, he will have struck out 100 more times, at 168.
He is on my Suspect List.
Anyone notice that Dominic Smith is hitting .333 for Atlanta?
ReplyDeleteHe is one of 4 Braves hitters well over .300. And Olsen (just short, at .293) has 30RBIs. And Acuna is hitting just .252 for them, which would still be a great average for the Mets.
Maybe I’ll move to Atlanta. They’re having a blast.
The positional green shoots are limited. AJ looks like a real player. Moribito will likely be a role player.
ReplyDeleteThere is literally zero power on the mlb team nor the minors.
First thing to do this offseason - BRING IN THOSE OUTFIELD WALLS!
If you exclude the AAAA vets in Syracuse, almost no one above St Lucie can hit worth spit. Is David Stearns a double agent? Likely not, because this organization cannot hit doubles or homers.
DeleteRVH, true.
ReplyDeleteIt just got worse. With 2 on last night, Mauricio topped a grounder. He beat it out by an eyelash, by sliding head first into first base. Great hustle. Then Bichette and Soto choked.
Fractured Mauricio thumb. Another guy to the IL. Season is irretrievably lost.
What really upsets me about last night is that the Mets' lineup made some bum look like a Cy Young candidate. A lefty with a lousy ERA and really bad splits against right handed batters kept the Mets from doing much for six innings. That is the real problem here. McLean should have been spotted to a 5-1 lead by the end of the fourth, and he could have pitched more aggressively.
ReplyDeleteWith Detmer looking like Chris Sale vs. the Mets last night, Kochanowicz should be in line to pitch a shutout vs. the “Hitless Wonders” today!
ReplyDeleteKochanowicz’s name is longer than most of his outings.
DeletePart of Detmers looking great is Mauricio absolutely cannot hit lefties and no one in the stupid organization coerces him to give up switch hitting. Detmerfanned him his first two ABs. As we also saw, Mauricio is injury-prone, but then again, most Mets are.
Remind me again why the Mets went after injury-prone Jorge Polanco for 1B and not Murakami. Stearns has to go.
ReplyDeleteAnyone notice how incredibly much better Braves catcher Drake Baldwin is than the puzzling Francisco Alvarez? Baldwin in 543 career at bats in his first 1+ seasons is hitting .284 with 27 HRs and 109 RBIs.
ReplyDeleteAlvarez, in 340 at bats over the same period, has hit .245 with 40 RBIs.
Their total strikeouts over that period are almost identical, despite Alvarez having far fewer at bats.
Baldwin was a 3rd rounder in 2022. Jett and Parada were Mets first rounders in 2022.
The Braves are a superbly run organization. The Mets are absurdly bad by comparison.
Since the FO doesn’t think they have a “manager problem” (hey, why even watch the games when you can just decipher spreadsheets instead), and for sure they don’t believe it’s a FO problem, they must think they have a “players” problem. But half the players are guys they just signed.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if the FO still has illusions of f climbing back to competitiveness, I’d expect them to find an early season trade, and I think the main guy on the block will be Alvarez, and I wouldn’t be shocked if he was packaged with either Baty (maybe less likely now with Mauricio out) or Vientos. Alvy is 24, still has some value and upside, but he’s a terrible defensive catcher who makes bad decisions both offensively and defensively. They just locked Torrens in for 2 years.
Those three weren’t drafted by this FO, and have been given a bunch of opportunities and have failed to run with them. Still, you can imagine the GM of a low payroll team believing that getting them out of the LOL Mets Circus will let them take a breath and actually get good (probably true) an each has years of cheap control remaining. And I could see Stearns realizing that the longer they stay here the lower their value will get.